Sometimes in life, you read a word on Wikipedia and you just know that you’re going to make a blog contest about it. This week I came across the word fakelore. Fakelore is manufactured folklore that is presented as if it is genuinely traditional.

Your assignment this week is to whip up some Halloween fakelore. This can take many forms. You could come up with a fictitious origin for the holiday. You could create a fake tradition and describe it. You could even invent a faux-historical Halloween mascot.

Something very central to this contest is the idea that fakelore must be intentionally deceptive. This means that we must never speak of this contest again. The fakelore generated herein must, after the contests ends, be spoken of only with the hushed and reverent tones of true believers. We must make other people believe it is real in order for it to qualify as fakelore. Maybe we can even have some games later involving spreading our new Internet memes.

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82 Responses to “Contest #18: Halloween Fakelore”

The tradition of bigger kids terrorizing younger kids by stealing their candy is a continuation of the old Celtic tradition of big boys being sent out to round up the unfortunate sacrifices who would occupy the wicker man at Samhain celebrations.

In the medieval German electorate of Saxony, autumnal harvest festivals were marked by the sons of peasant families beating up and stealing parts of the harvest of the sons of wealthy families. The practice was symbolic of the effort and luck necessary to protecting and sharing the community’s food stores through the winter.

The modern tradition of throwing eggs at the houses of those who give undesirable candy (if candy at all) when one is “trick-or-treating” is derived from the Druid tradition of throwing eggs at a neighbor’s home during the celebrations of Samhain, to wish a neighbor luck, and protect their home from any bad spirits terrorizing them through the year. While this tradition has been perverted within modern years, one in our society must feel that something is wrong, if they do not see at least one house with egg yolks on it’s walls within their neighborhood, on Nov. 1

Thousands of years ago, before recorded history, mankind was enslaved by a race of super intelligent vegetables called Pumps. The Pumps were clever but their mobility was limited by cumbersome vines and their awkward roundish shape. As a result they relied on their human slaves to tend and cultivate their patches where their Pump children grew from seed. One day a man named Jacko burned the patches and chased the the rest into a cave where they hid underground. Later, from the ashes of the Pump’s patches grew the vegetable known as the Pumpkin (kin of the Pumps) a more docile and tastier form of the original. So, Halloween is actually an independence celebration. Every year on this day we dress up as terrible monsters and carve Pumpkins as a grisly warning to the remaining Pumps underground to stay away because we now rule the surface.

Think it’s a Christmas Carol? Think again. The brief little ditty actually goes back centuries to Poland, where it was sung on All Hallows’ Eve as carollers went house to house. While there was essentially only one verse to the song, the name of a different Saint was used in the first line each time. Tradition dictated that each verse brought blessings to the house in front of which it was sung, therefore requiring a bigger donation from the master of the house, thus ensuring that the carollers could make their rounds quickly.

But that’s not all! Carolling itself is not a Christmas tradition at all, but rather a custom of All Saints Day, the night before which revellers would wish blessings on the village in the aforementioned manner. When the Gregorian calendar was adopted in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, the resulting shift of holidays led certain traditions that had been associated with All Saints’ Day up to that point to become associated with the newer incarnation of Christmas. The tunes survived, the lyrics were changed.

In the late 1400′s, with Christianity on the rise in Europe, Neopagan religions such as wicca, or witchcraft as it is commonly known, were highly frowned apon. In the small town of Weenwood in central Europe a young priestess by the name of Jacqueline Dowell reportedly kidnapped 16 children and murdered them in a brutal and sacrificial manner. Taking justice into their own hands a mob of nearly 300 armed themselves with torches and pitchforks and headed down to the hollows in Weenwood forrest to capture Jacqueline. They burned her alive along with nearly half of Weewood forrest but before she died, Jacqueline vowed to reap her revenge on Weenwood and finish the work she had started. On the one year anniversary of Jacquelines death the town of Weenwood returned to where the hollows once stood and found a large pumpkin patch growing in its place. Fearing that this was Jacquelines gateway from the damned,the town removed the pumpkins and burned the remaining vines. Still worried her spirit would haunt their town they hallowed out the pumkins and placed a small candle inside. Every house in Weenwood recieved one hopes to ward of Jacqelines spirit. As day broke the fallowing morning the town of Weenwood was relieved to fined that what the had done had worked. The day became known as De vita decedere el hallows de Weenwood and the pumpkins became known as Jacquelines lanterns.

The tradition was passed on from generation to generation and overtime De vita decedere el hallows de Weenwood, became EL hallows de Weenwood and eventually Halloween. As for Jacquelines lanterns they to were shortend overtime to what we now call them, Jacolanterns. And though the names have all changed over time Halloween is still all about the Children. Only instead of saving there souls, we stuff there faces with candy

The practice of carving pumpkins comes from the old Turkish tradition of creating “soul vessels” in which our spirits can travel to the Holy Land after our deaths. The Turks spread the tradition throughout all their conquered lands, and Europeans brought it to America in the 1500s.

The pumpkins are hollowed out so the souls are comfy, while the eye holes are created for them to be able to check out what life-after-death looks like. The wacky, toothy pumpkin-grins are an American addition to this ancient practice.

About a thousand years ago a mad Arab, discovered the recipe for sausages by grinding up meat from his enemies, he then proceeded to celebrate by singing joyfully and dancing on the streets.

It is said that then several bystanders approached the man and asked him what was he celebrating. The man replied he had found out the most delicious food recipe ever.

He invited some people to his house and they all had their sausages, the guests unknowingly eating human flesh in this way.

The next day several other people went to the man’s house to try the delicacy, but them man didn’t have any more meat, so he told them to come back later and muttering the password “Trick”. He then went to town and told several people that there would be a party shortly in his house, and to prove that you were invited you would have to say the word “Treat” to get in.

The Arab went home and several people began to appear and entered by saying the password “Trick” or “Treat”, as they were entering he showed them to two different rooms, if “trick” they would go to the dining room, if “treat” they would go into the kitchen, where unknown to the waiting guests people were being killed and ground up to make sausages.

One of the guests is supposed to have discovered this act while he was going to the bathroom and warning every other person, they all took the man outside and promptly opened his belly killing him and making sausages from his intestines.

The man’s name was Al-o-Ween, and following that date everyone begun to have delicious food on October 31st, and carving pumpkins (symbolizing the slit belly) to celebrate Al-o-Ween’s death.

In the deepest, darkest, depths of the African jungle two explorers and their faithful guide came across a huge tree with a warning carved into its bark. Their frightened guide was forced to translate and as the last word escaped his lips his soul escaped his body and he died, but the explorers now knew that all living things beyond this point had a terrible curse on them. To destroy anything meant suffering the curse and passing the curse along to your descendants. Even though their guide lay there dead they disregarded the curse and continued their explorations. As the days went by and nothing happened they began to believe that there was no curse and they forgot all about it.
A week later they discovered the most beautiful bird that anyone had ever seen. The bird was sitting on it’s nest and under the bird were eggs that looked like iridescent pearl. They captured and killed the bird and stole its eggs. Only after they noticed the bird’s blood on their hands did they remember the curse. They were very frightened and they stayed awake all night wondering if something bad would happen. It was the last day of October. When the morning light fought its way through the trees they felt foolish. Nothing had happened. There was no curse.
They eventually went back home to America with their discoveries. A year went by and when each man looked out his door on November 1st there were eggs smashed all over their houses. It was a terrible mess that took a lot of work to clean up! After this started happening every single year on the anniversary of the beautiful birds death they realized that the curse was real after all!
So, if you wake up on November 1st and look out and there are eggs smashed all over your house, then somewhere in your ancestry you are related to either the explorer, Trikor or the explorer, Treete. The only way to break the curse is to somehow vandelize someone elses property in order to pay homage to the soul of the explorer’s faithful but unlucky guide, Teliot Papore (TP for short).

A long time ago there were neighboring lands in Southern Europe with a lot of hostility between them. To help make peace (and hopefully an alliance), the Kings agreed that the son of the first king would marry the daughter of the second. This move was good for both kingdoms, but not necessarily for the prince and princess involved.
The prince wasn’t really in to the princess that much and he wasn’t ready to give up being a royal bachelor – he still felt like he had some wild oats to sow. However, it was his duty to marry the princess, so he did.
After the wedding it became increasingly difficult for him to escape his wife and sneak off with hotties. The princess started getting suspicious and it seemed as though she might soon find out about his affairs if he continued to have them. The prince had a decision to make: He would either have to give up his provocative lifestyle, or risk the peace that they had worked so hard to create.
It was during this time that the prince came up with a wonderful idea. If he could host a party in which everyone wore disguises, then no one would know who he was. Also, he could have one of his servants wear the same disguise as himself. This would create a decoy prince to keep the princess busy.
Around this time of year he had the first costume party, and it was very successful (the guests liked it and he got some action). He continued to have them pretty frequently, and he never got caught.
It is said that many of the young women who attended these parties were aware of the prince’s intentions, and thus made their costumes such that they would show off their physiques. This may explain why so many girls wear slutty costumes today.

Before toilet paper people used the leaves of trees next to their outhouses to wipe their bottoms. When toilet paper was invented in the 1790′s people immediately removed it from the roll and threw it all about their trees. The thinking behind this was “I have always taken my wipes from the branches of trees. Why should this new tissue change that?” Eventually, people started to wise up to the benefits of leaving the paper on the roll and putting it next to the toilet. By the turn of the century almost everyone had installed TP holders in their bathrooms. Those who still had yards with trees covered in paper were considered foolish and backwards folk. Around the Halloween of 1801 children began adding TPing to their arsenal of tricks. After a night of TPing the neighbors would look at the victim’s house and say “Oh my look at the Smiths’, They’ve still got their bathroom tissue strewn throughout the bows of the old elm. How very primitive, we moved ours inside years ago.”

Halloween was not always a horror-themed holiday. Originally, ancient Celtic mystics would celebrate the changing of the seasons and pay reverence to the spirits of their animist religion. They would do this by carving small wooden effigies of those who had died in the past year. When Christianity finally began to spread to Ireland in the 5th century, the missionaries condemned such practices and had the shamans exiled or even killed. As the centuries wore on, the story changed, as is so often the case with the oral tradition. Instead of a peaceful Celtic celebration of the coming of winter, it became a frightful bedtime story of evil trolls who captured innocent children and trapped their souls in wooden dolls forever. Although for the most part this story has all but disappeared, it is rather faithfully portrayed in the film “Ernest Scared Stupid”, although certain details did have to be changed for entertainment purposes.

Although the connection is rarely made, many Halloween traditions can be traced back to the true story that eventually became the folktale of the children “Hansel and Gretel”. As the story goes, the young pair went to the witch’s house thinking they would be “treated” to the candy they saw, but they were of course “tricked” and nearly eaten.

But their actual fate was far worse than we normally hear. The witch only had one cage, which was not big enough for both children, so she plucked out Gretel’s eyes and ate them, then kept her in a room with one door and no windows. When the day finally came that Hansel was to be eaten, Gretel heard her brother’s screams and burst through the door in a fit of rage, terminally knocking the witch to the ground. But the blind Gretel could not retrieve Hansel from the stew in which he cooked. Her attempt to swim through the sea of ingredients and grab the only one she wanted (Hansel) inspired those who heard the tale to eventually create the game “Bobbing for Hansel” (they started using apples after a few kids drowned).

Gretel lived for a long time after losing her brother, inhabiting the house as a friendly blind woman who gladly gave treats to children that would listen to her story. She told her story to many children, always concluding with this moral: “If you think you’re going to get something for free, ask yourself and ask the giver: ‘Is this a Trick or Treat?’”

Held in schools, neighborhoods, and towns & cities of all sizes. The object of this race is to be the first to make it to the end with all your balls (popcorn balls of course) still attached.

Set up: design a running course that passes through a park or grove of trees. Each participant must run to the finish line naked*, other than 1) a pair of running shoes 2) a numbered identifying cap 3) popcorn balls stuck to cover every inch of the body.

Object: to be the first to finish without losing your balls. They may be snatched by children, they may be snatched by squirrels, they may be snatched by monkeys, but you must try to be the first to make it through the gauntlet with your original set of balls still attached.

Winners get to ride on the Popcorn Ball Float in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

(*wherever children are involved a body suit is allowed)

(more adult versions of this race spring up after hours but winners do not ride in the parade; more often they end up on You Tube)

Teeth have been with us since the very beginning. Dentistry, however, is a
relatively new field of endeavor. And as with every new thing, there was an
early marketing hurdle the industry had to get over, to ensure a profitable
business. Indeed, in the early days of dentistry, failure loomed around every
bicuspid. Teeth were healthy, and dentists were poor. “What we need,” cried
the poor dentists, “is more public support. Look at the flower industry: they
created Mothers’ Day, and their future is now assured. Or the chocolats
industry, which formed Valentine’s Day to guarantee their own sweet success.
Well, it’s time we did something for ourselves.” And the poor dentists scoured
the calendar, looking for something, anything, that might bring in the
business they so desperately needed. “Thanksgiving,” they wondered. “No. People
sleeping off turkey-induced comas won’t bring in any business for poor dentists.
Christmas? Turkey, goose, whatever it is, it’s bringing the teeth in the door.”
And finally, finally, the dentists found the old harvest festival Samhain just
lying around, mostly ignored. And they thought “We can rework this Samhain,
although the name has got to go. But if we introduce lots of gooey, sticky,
cavity-causing goodness, we can increase our own work-load. And we’re in luck:
it’s positioned just before the major money-spending holidays, so as to bring
in the dollars the enable us to purchase those wonderful gifts our wives and
children so desire. We can create happy homes for our kids, happy bedrooms for
ourselves, and, well, less happiness for the toothy people who’ll be coming to
us, but that’s their role in the economic circle of lfie.” And the dentists
thought, and they thought, and they thought of the hollowing teeth that would
be arriving for filling or pulling, and they cried “wheee!” and named the
new holiday Halloween.

When I was a little boy, around the age of 7 or 8, my grandmother came to live with us for a year. She was a warm woman with a broad smile, twinkling brown eyes, golden coppery skin and a mass of gray frizzy hair that surrounded her head like a cloud. I’ll never forget the Halloween she spent with us.

That time was a turbulent time for me. My parents were getting a divorce, and that turned everything upside down. It made me angry. I was angry at my dad for leaving, I was angry at my mom for fighting with him, and I was angry at everyone who made those cooing noises at me, but not my grandma. She never talked to me like I was a baby or tried to get me to do something that I didn’t want to do. That Halloween I told my mom I didn’t want to go trick-or-treating when the neighborhood kids came to the door asking if I wanted to come. I slammed the door and sat in my room alone.

Then I heard the clattering of dishes and humming in the kitchen. My grandma was probably going to make some of her famous pumpkin cookies. Sometimes, when I helped her bake, she would let me lick the spoon and tell me stories about Africa. Slowly, I emerged from my room and made my way to the kitchen.

â€œHey Gramma, whatcha makin’?”Â I asked peering into the big mixing bowl.
â€œOh just the some of my pumpkin cookies. Do you want to help?”Â She asked, smiling down at me.
â€œYeah, ok, I guess,”Â I replied noncommittally.
â€œHave I ever told you the story of Pompe?”Â my grandmother asked as she looked at me while mixing.
â€œPompe? Who’s that?”Â

â€œPompe was the youngest daughter of a chief of the village where our family is from. Many many many years ago, Pompe lived in the village and was very happy. In fact, Pompe means ‘smile’ in Kinambija. She was always smiling in her orange dress and was very friendly. She lived and helped her mother in the village until one day her mother had a serious talk with her.
‘Pompe, how old are you now?’ her mother asked.
‘I’m fifteen,’ Pompe said.
‘Well, a man from the next village saw you the other day and he said he wants to marry you. You’re getting married in the next month.’

â€œPompe was horrified! She had never met this man, and now she had to marry him and go live with him. But Pompe knew that this was a part of growing up, so she nodded to her mother to show that she understood, but inside she was very scared.

â€œThe day of the wedding came quickly. Pompe’s mother, older sisters, and grandmother were all helping her get ready for her wedding, and cooing over how beautiful she looked and giving her advice. Pompe was scared and nervous. She didn’t want to get married! She didn’t want to grow up! Then Pompe got an idea. She said she had to go to relieve herself, but once she got out of the tent, she ran straight into the forest. She ran and ran and ran and ran! Soon she got very lost and the sun was going down. She stopped running and looked around. She was on a narrow path and ahead of her she could see a choka-a little sweet. She ran over to it, picked it up, and ate it. It was so good! She saw another one ahead of her, and she ate that one, too. One after another after another she ate the choka until she heard a whistling noise. She stopped and looked all around. At night, the duppies who lived in the forest whistled to each other and attacked people. Now Pompe was really scared. She heard another whistle above her. Then she saw a white form jump down from the branches above her. It had an oval head and a body like a child but sharp claws. Pompe tried to run away, but the duppy jumped on her, pushing her to the ground. Then everything went black.

â€œPompe awoke to the sound of her older brother standing over her shouting.
‘She’s here! I found her!’ He shouted.
Everyone was relieved that she was alive and yelled at her for running away. ‘You could have been eaten by a lion or attacked by a duppy! Why did you run off like that?!’
The wedding was rescheduled for the next day, and this time Pompe did not run off. Although Pompe was very scared, she stayed with her new husband and was a good wife. Her husband was actually very kind and took care of her very well. He did everything he could to make Pompe happy, but she was still afraid.

â€œSome months after the wedding, Pompe became really big in the tummy. Now, you may think that she is too young to be pregnant, but that was ok back then. Everyone was really happy that she was pregnant, but Pompe felt something was wrong. She asked her mother about the bad feelings she was having, and her mother said it was nothing. A month later she asked her mother again, but her mother said it was nothing. A third time Pompe visited her mother, and this time Pompe’s mother was concerned.
‘Well, you could go visit the witch doctor outside of the village. Maybe he can tell you what is wrong,’ Pompe’s mother said in a whisper.

â€œThe witch doctor was a power witch, and while he offered medicines to cure people, some people suspected he did evil magics to harm people. A lot of people thought he was crazy.
The next morning, Pompe sent off to visit the witch doctor. She arrived at his hut in the afternoon and called out to him.
‘Hello! My name is Pompe…’ Pompe started.
‘I know,’ said a voice from inside the hut. ‘Come inside and I will tell you about your babies.’
Babies? Pompe thought to herself. She stepped inside the hut, and in the smoke she could see a very old man sitting with a twisted stick in one hand and a bird in the other.
‘What you have done is not right, Pompe. Your babies are not right! Your babies are evil! You shouldn’t have run into the forest! You will bring a curse down upon the whole village!’ With that the old man stood up and threw the stick in the fire and threw the bird at Pompe. The fire blazed as Pompe ran from the hut. Pompe was so scared she could barely think. She cried as she ran back toward the village. What if its true, Pompe thought, what if I am going to curse the whole village? At sunset her legs became weak, so weak that she had to sit on the ground. The sun sank lower, and Pompe’s head became foggy. She laid back, and stretched out her arms and legs. Then she looked at her arms. They were turning green! She stared at her arms in shock and tried to shake them, but they were becoming vines! They sprouted big, fuzzy leaves. She looked down at her pregnant belly in her usual orange dress, and it became a big, round, orange gourd. Then Pompe was a person no more.

â€œThe next day, the witch doctor told Pompe’s mother what had happened to Pompe and why he had to turn her into something else. Pompe’s mother was very sad and wept and wept and wept, but she went out and took the gourd that used to be Pompe and ate it. She called it Pompe-kin (kin means gourd in Kinambija.) She saved some of the seeds and planted them, and gave some to friends. Now, every year on that day, the children of the village dress up as adults and get little â€œwedding gifts”Â so they won’t be afraid to grow up. That is where Halloween truly came from.”Â

We were now waiting for the cookies to bake. The sweet pumpkin smell filled my nostrils. I looked up at my grandma, not knowing what to say.
â€œHoney, I know growing up is hard. It’s scary and it’s tough, but I will always be here for you. Here, open your hand.”Â
I held out my hand and my grandmother poured a few pumpkin seeds in my hand. â€œWhenever you’re scared or frightened, look at these seeds and think of me and us being together.”Â

Aliens did so make halloween! They brought the “seed” that turned out to be the human race to earth in a spaceship that looked like a pumpkin. Somewhere in our racial memory we know this because the pumpkin keeps surfacing from time to time in our history, entertainment, and politics. In some societies they call the moon a pumpkin because, subconsciously, they yearn for the aliens to come back and take us “home”. In entertainment, Cinderella’s mode of transportation was a pumpkin. If the aliens didn’t bring us to earth in a giant spaceship pumpkin, who would have ever thought of a pumpkin as a vehicle? We even elected G.W. Bush to the “highest” office in our country. One day the aliens WILL come back for us, praise us for our creativness, laugh at us for electing Bush, TWICE, and then take us to the great pumpkin patch in the sky. Live Long And Pumpkin, Spock.

Once upon a time a species popped into existence on the planet Earth. They were unique in that they possessed no amazing physical prowess, or respectable size, but their brains were substantially large when compared to their overall body mass. Over hundreds of thousands of years they developed very peculiar social norms, unlike any ever existing on this particular planet. Roughly two thousand years after the supposed birth of some supposed person who holds a very special place in the story of a supposed religion, these social norms and practices coalesced into a number of interesting days of worship and celebration. One such day comes 10 months and 31 days after the arbitrary beginning of each calendar year. On this day these creatures dress up in often scant costumes, distribute pieces of sweet processed corn syrup, perform acts of social unrest, become heavily inebriated, and carve wretched glowing images into large gourds.

Members of the Universal Anthropology Investigative Committee (UAIC) are currently inquiring into the specific origins of this date. Little progress, other than fakelore-based inside jokes has been made. See also Human Christmas, Human Easter, Human St. Patrick’s Day, and Human Bachelor Party.

In that case, my grandmother really came up with this? And by my grandmother, I mean the women I think of when I hear the term, not any of my mothers’ mothers. Ask the UAIC for a definition of real to see if this women exists, ’cause some people might say she doesn’t.

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